I am so sorry that I was not able to write for so long. Lot of you were concerned when the earthquake hit in Chile. Thanks for all the emails, we are alive, happy and well.
Today is our last day in Mendoza, Argentina. We are hitting the road again after a 5 week break and will be heading to Bolivia. Leaving Mendoza is really sad, especially because we had spent enough time here to get to know the city very well, and make a lot of friends.
I have been taking Spanish classes here for last 5 weeks and loved the school. The classes were very small and often times I was the only one in the class. This allowed me to have many great conversations with beautiful young Argentine teachers, about their lives, their families, the politics and their culture. Often times, after they learned that I was in the psychology business I found my self hearing pretty intimate stuff, but I sure was glad not to have to worry about dual relationships and ethical dilemmas. I have made many great friends at school from all over the world, even from Slovakia!!!
In my first week of school one of my many teachers, who traveled the world and lived in different places, told me that she had to return home because it was way too hard to live anywhere else. When I asked her why she stated that because while abroad “nadie me da un beso, nadie me da un abrazo” (none gives me kiss and hug). Only little did I know about Mendoza’s affectionate culture then.
I have never seen a culture that is so loving, so affectionate, so family and community oriented as the people in Mendoza. By the end of the second week, I was kissing and hugging pretty much everyone : my teachers, the street vender from whom I was buying a newspaper, all the staff in the hotel, and of course the waitress at my favorite lunch place who always greeted my with “hola Corazon”. Todd took it little further and besides the kisses he was able to negotiate illegal beer sales ( beer sales are illegal after 11:00 PM) with pretty much all “tienda” owners within a 10 mile radius and during the Italian Days in Plaza Italia he even danced all night long with few of the tienda‘s owners. Staying in Mendoza for a while definitely made me reflect on values, and the importance of friendship and strong family relationships people in Mendoza have.
During our stay here, the Wine harvest “VENDEMIA” was going on. It is basically 5 weeks of various events- leading to the “queen” selection of the vineyard provinces. Mendoza has 5 main plazas ( kind of like the number five on a dice) with the Plaza Independencia in the middle, which is the biggest one. During the Vendemia, the stages are set up in every Plaza, and millions of glasses of wine are sold for .50 cents. People are dancing and singing just about everywhere. The posters of life size “queen candidates” are displayed all over the city and selecting the new queen seems to be the obsession of every Mendozino. It is their tradition since 1938. Even Todd got so into it he kept staring at posters of Paola from Lujan de Cuyo for hours.
The day’s before the selection begins there is this huge parade in which about 150 thousand people gather on the street waiting for carriages with the 12 queen candidates passing by and waving. I have never seen anything like that before. The “home made truck-like carriages” were huge and had tons of lights and loud music, every potential queen had one (12 total). The queen always stood at the highest point of the carriage and waved like there was no tomorrow. She had her 10 princess helpers with her on the truck and activities in the rest of the truck space varied from open fires and grilling steaks, to professional dance performances. Yes, this all took place on the truck. Here comes the best part, the ten princesses were not throwing candies at the crowd of people but grapes, pears, apples and cantaloupes. While people around me tried their best to catch some fruits, I was just hoping that a cantaloupe would not knock me down unconscious. I was kicking myself for not wearing my helmet that night.
We were very lucky to get tickets to see the grand finale of the queen selection . The show was spectacular, the dance, the singing , the costumes. Basically the story of the show was set up so it explained the history of Argentina ( times under Spanish rule until present). The open air theatre is only used once a year for this occasion. It is set in a boxed canyon in the foothills of the Andes and its beauty is way beyond description. It holds 30 thousand people and we were told that another 30 thousand were watching the performance from the mountains. Todd described the performance with 800 dancers like a Broadway show on steroids. It was amazing.
I was originally not going to write about this but it was a great lesson that I learned on this trip so here it comes. There was only one entrance to enter the theatre, which was operated by FIVE machines that were not working properly. We and other 29 994 people were standing in the line for over 2 hours. The theatre is very complicated to get to because of its Canyon location. You have to walk about two miles on a dirt road to find the “hidden entrance.” So the road was completely blocked by people who were touching pretty much all your body parts. It was about 90 degrees Fahrenheit that night. But it was actually lot of fun because the whole crowd was dancing and cheering for their favorite queen. However, with the lines not moving the frustration was more and more visible. By the time we made it to the entrance the show had already started, all the lights were off and we did not bother looking for our seat and just grabbed the 6 ones that were available. Of course about 30 minutes later someone came and wanted our seats so we just got up and left. We learned that we were in the wrong section and had to walk all the way back in the opposite direction of thousands other people coming towards us. By this time I was “starting to lose it” …
Anyway we came to our seats and there were of course people sitting in our places. I was just getting ready to scream and say like…Excuse me, these are OUR seats ..and Graciela Todd´s cousins wife, looked at me and smiled with the look that said “you are not going to make them go through what we just went through, are you?” She just smiled at the older couple and asked them to slide over a little and told the rest of our group to sit on the steps. She chatted with the women who was sitting in MY seat and they laugh a lot during the show. I realized how ridiculous my little burst of anger was and it really did not matter where I was sitting. The concept of MY seat did not enter Graciela’s mind at all, for her it was all about sharing the seat and enjoying ourselves. I have so much to learn about patience, sharing and unconditional love, I realized.
Anyway, while in Mendoza we visited lots of Bodegas and olive oil factories and learned the business of making wines and fancy schmancy olive oils. I was fortunate to meet people who were professors at the Universities and was able to get tours, spend time in both public and private Colleges and observe the whole education process . We also were fortunate to do some volunteer work at the Chilean Embassy helping to load trucks for the Eartquake victims which was really amazing.
Oh and I forget, we went to Chile and visited the island of Chiloe. People there believe in ghost ships, and dwarfs that cause unwanted pregnances in chosen women. So far so good for me, it would be a hard one to explain. We also visited Santiago de Chile, and Vailpraiso the city I liked very much. We were very lucky to leave a week before the earthquake hit. We also got to hang out in Pablo’s Neruda’s house which was pretty cool. At the same time one of our best friends Ronnie visited us and it was great to hang out with him and to show him Mendoza.
Which reminds me of a funny story. One night we went out and after few drinks Todd all of sudden wanted to go to see the transvestite show in a local bar, since we heard from our Spanish teachers that these are really fun in Mendoza. After I refused to talk to people on the street and ask them for directions due to my timid personality, we decided to go somewhere else. However, Todd decided to give it a shot and tried to ask the taxi driver in his broken Spanish what the word for Transvestite is. He said something about girls but not really girls but boys. Our 60 year old driver had no idea what Todd was talking about. While I was so embarrassed in the back of the car sitting quietly, Ronnie decided to come to Todd‘s rescue. Ronnies Spanish is pretty ok, except he mixes his tenses often. So what actually came out was “ can you please take us to the place were you used to wear women’s clothing”. The driver looked at him like he was a sick perv and Ronnie without knowing what he said just looked out the window as he got freaked out by the drivers look and dropped the subject. Oh gosh, we laugh so hard on this one.
I really have to go now,
Miss you all and I hope that spring will come to you soon.
To be continued,
Kristina.
